A speech you won’t hear from President Bush

As a public service, I’ve written a speech for President Bush to use when we invade Iran.

“My fellow Americans:

“Thirty minutes ago, on my command, the United States, leading a coalition of peace-loving nations, began striking targets in Iran. This is the opening stage of a broad and concerted campaign to defend the civilized world from the threat posed by nuculer weapons in the hands of a regime known for supporting terror.

“In the spring of 2006, Iran announced that it had, for the first time, enriched uranium, a key process in the production of fuel for nuculer reactors and nuculer weapons. Iran’s president promised that his nation’s aims were peaceful. However, the United States has obtained incontrovertible proof that Iran is just days from producing nuculer arms.

“I am not unmindful of the skepticism with which this information is regarded by some. They feel that because coalition forces never found the weapons of mass destruction we expected to find in Iraq, we should ignore the grave and gathering threat posed by Iran. My fellow Americans, I reject these assaults on the credibility of our intelligence-gathering operations. The situations are not at all alike.

“Yes, when we invaded Iraq, we were really sure we’d find weapons of mass destruction. But as we invade Iran, we are really, really, really sure. That’s three reallys, my fellow Americans – two more than before.

“Indeed, we are guided by the greatest preponderance of intelligence in history. And I’ll tell you what I’m going to do: I’m going to declassify it and share it with you so you’ll know we’re not making this up. I mean, we’ve intercepted e-mails from the Iranian president asking his defense minister when the nuculer weapons will be ready. The defense minister replies, Tuesday.’ And the president types in, lol’ – that’s a code they use on the Internets for laughing out loud – and he says, Boy, we really fooled ’em, didn’t we? The Great Satan will never know what hit it.’

” Great Satan.’ That’s their name for you and me, my fellow Americans. There’s more proof, too. We have photographs of the nuculer weapons taken by a janitor with a tiny digital camera in his turban. Now, I’m not going to mention what shift he works, because we have to protect his identity. No telling what they’d do to him if they found out he was spying for the CIA.

“We also know the address where the weapons are being kept. It’s at 1367 Prophet Mohammed Blessings On His Name Blvd. NE, just south of Death to Israel Circle. We even ran it through Mapquest, so we know exactly how to get there. See, we’ve done our homework on this thing.

“So it serves no useful purpose for people to suggest that American credibility was damaged because of a few understandable mistakes in Iraq. Iraq and Iran are different countries. That’s why they’re spelled different. Yet we keep reading all these negative stories quoting members of Congress, Army generals, plumbers, teachers and nurses, all asking if we know what we’re doing this time. What’s even worse is the stories quoting unnamed White House sources. And I wish the first lady would cut it out.

“It’s my job to make the tough decisions necessary to protect the American people. And you can’t protect the American people by having a pre-9/11 mentality in a post-9/11 world. It just won’t work. Anybody tells you it will, they’re disassembling. That means they’re lying.

“The bottom line is, an enemy that hates us and our way of life is about to acquire nuculer weapons. We cannot allow that to happen.

“Yes, I know some of you are skeptical. You’re just going to have trust us.”

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for The Miami Herald. His e-mail address is: lpitts@miamiherald.com.